Off- Page SEO vs. On-Page SEO

Generating traffic and interest in your web page, along with improving the ranking of the website are the major goals of search engine optimization. Among the various tactics that are applied to attain top ranking, there are two main categories: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.

Both these techniques work towards achieving a higher ranking in the search results but differ in the approach. Both of these tactics are important to boost your online presence and garner organic traffic to your web pages. To put it simply, both On-page and off-page SEO help search engines to navigate your real estate site in search of relevant keywords and phrases.

On-Page SEO:

On-Page optimization is about the visibility and readability of the website by the search engine. The website needs to be structured in such a way that the search engines can easily navigate the site to determine the relevancy of the site to the assigned keywords. You are in direct control of the factors that can affect your overall ranking, and by adjusting these relevant factors, you can achieve your desired goal.

There are a few major factors that can affect your on-page SEO.

Content:

Top-quality content is more likely to increase your ranking as the search engines are programmed to look for content-rich websites and remove the spammers. The content needs to be centered on the topic at hand, in our case the real estate business, with a fair amount of primary keywords mixed in along with secondary and long-tail keywords. The keywords help to improve your ranking, but care must be taken to avoid the overuse of such keywords. The quantity of the keyword and the overall content does not matter as long as the content possess depth and relevance. For instance, you can talk about the benefits of buying a home in the next couple of years using relevant industry data to support your arguments.

Title tags and Meta descriptions:

Both the title tags and meta tags are key elements in SEO because they are the window to the website. The title tags contain up to 70 characters and they must be rich in relevant keywords without stuffing the title with key phrases. Optimizing the title tag involves using proper keywords and keeping it concise and to the point.

Meta tags are the descriptions that the user sees along with the title tags. These tags help to describe the content of the website. Usually, it is limited to 155-160 characters, and nowadays, it serves as an ad copy for the main content. To make proper use of these tags, the keywords used must attract organic traffic along with captivating the audience.

Loading speed:

The loading speed of a website is a deciding factor in the overall ranking of the site. Google wishes to provide its users with relevant pages that will help increase user-experience. This means that the pages need to load faster in order to rank high in the search results.

Internal linking and site navigation:

Linking helps to provide context to the search engine as it navigates through your website. By linking internally to other similar web pages of your own real estate site, you are increasing the relevance of your site and there in improving the ranking of that particular site. The links must contain anchor texts that are rich in keywords and phrases so as to increase the chance of views. These links also serve as breadcrumbs and help the search engine and the user to navigate through your web pages.

Therefore, if you want to improve your site navigation, make proper use of sitemaps and internal links to achieve higher page ranking.

Image optimization:

As a real estate business, your website undoutedly must have images. However, simple posting images is of no use, it is crucial to add alt text for them. These alt texts are simply a description of the image such as its size, name, and description using related keywords. These alt texts help the search engine to categorize the images and help it to understand the content of the page.

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page optimization is about your online reputation and as such is a long-term investment. Off-site SEO helps to improve your website’s authority by determining how other sites relate to you. It takes a lot of time to build the brand name and garner loyalty and credibility in the form of backlinks. The results of off-page optimization lie in the shadows as there is no immediate change.

Link building:

To improve your credibility, backlinks from reputed sites is a must. Search engines place high importance on those sites that have organic links. Even though the relevance of link popularity is decreasing, the success of the backlinks depends not on the amount but the quality and content of the links. The common ways of achieving links are through blog directories, forums, comments, link exchange schemes and so on. Search engine’s algorithms are made to detect false and artificial links and penalize the offending websites, and so it is best to go through organic means.

Social media marketing:

Besides link building, another way of improving your ranking is by promoting your real estate business on social media. Google provides importance to those sites that are linked via social interactions such as the number of tweets or likes the website garners. By promoting through various social sites, you can increase the reach of your site and engage your audience across multiple platforms. The number of mentions on social media sites is gaining prominence as a ranking factor of search engines, and thus a social media page will improve your online presence.

Social bookmarking:

Though it is one of the older techniques, it is still an effective way of promoting your real estate business. There are a number of sites such as Reddit, Tumblr, etc. where you can promote your content to attract interest to your site. Participating in discussion and leaving helpful comments also increases your online presence and in turn promotes your website.

Which is more important?

Both of these techniques are important to improve your overall ranking in search results. On-Page SEO is a short-term process that undergoes constant change and thus requires detailed research on the relevant keywords and content optimization. Off-Page SEO, on the other hand, is a long-term process. Despite their varying focus, a combination of both these tactics is vital for the successful ranking of the website.

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